A smartly informative book that should inspire readers to try a new game.
It’s often man vs. machine in this beguiling foray into games and why we play them.
New York City–based journalist Roeder, a former senior writer for FiveThirtyEight, traverses the globe and centuries in his lively quest to understand the appeal of a handful of sophisticated games that “offer simplified models of a dauntingly complicated world, with dynamics that we can grasp and master”—checkers, chess, Go, backgammon, poker, Scrabble, and bridge. An entertaining storyteller, the author provides numerous profiles of those who were especially proficient at these games as he explores the appeal, strategies, and intricacies of each—beginning with checkers, “whose reputation as a child’s game belies its haunting depth.” Over 40 years and more than 1,000 competitive matches, Marion Tinsley, “the Ernest Shackleton of the game,” only lost three games. In 1963, blind Robert Nealey was the first to compete against an early computer, never losing. The “program itself was an achievement and a watershed,” proving computers could learn via artificial intelligence. Chess was a skill every good knight should possess. From chess hustlers in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park to the baffling Mechanical Turk, Alan Turing, chess-playing computer programs, and some of the great chess masters, Roeder describes what makes the game so complex, mesmerizing, and addictive. Go, which originated in China more than 2,000 years ago, is “often touted as the most complex board game played by humans.” Played with simple black and white stones, its rules “are stark and elegant, as if they were discovered rather than invented.” Backgammon, Roeder suggests, balances luck and skill, placing it somewhere between chess and poker, a “game of imperfectinformation,” while bridge “requires memory and wisdom, prudence and risk, and empathy—for both friend and foe.” Poker, meanwhile, is “the world’s most popular card game in our capitalistic age.” And then there’s Scrabble, “turning a heap of letters into a beautiful spider web of words on the board.”
A smartly informative book that should inspire readers to try a new game.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00377-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
“Protect your passion,” writes an NBA star in this winning exploration of how we can succeed in life.
A future basketball Hall of Famer’s rosy outlook.
Curry is that rare athlete who looks like he gets joy from what he does. There’s no doubt that the Golden State Warriors point guard is a competitor—he’s led his team to four championships—but he plays the game with nonchalance and exuberance. That ease, he says, “only comes from discipline.” He practices hard enough—he’s altered the sport by mastering the three-point shot—so that he achieves a “kind of freedom.” In that “flow state,” he says, “I can let joy and creativity take over. I block out all distractions, even the person guarding me. He can wave his arms and call me every name in the book, but I just smile and wait as the solution to the problem—how to get the ball into the basket—presents itself.” Curry shares this approach to his craft in a stylish collection that mixes life lessons with sharp photographs and archival images. His dad, Dell, played in the NBA for 16 years, and Curry learned much from his father and mother: “My parents were extremely strict about me and my little brother Seth not going to my pops’s games on school nights.” Curry’s mother, Sonya, who founded the Montessori elementary school that Curry attended in North Carolina, emphasized the importance not just of learning but of playing. Her influence helped Curry and his wife, Ayesha, create a nonprofit foundation: Eat. Learn. Play. He writes that “making reading fun is the key to unlocking a kid’s ability to be successful in their academic journeys.” The book also has valuable pointers for ballers—and those hoping to hit the court. “Plant those arches—knees bent behind those 10 toes pointing at the hoop, hips squared with your shoulders—and draw your power up so you explode off the ground and rise into your shot.” Sounds easy, right?
“Protect your passion,” writes an NBA star in this winning exploration of how we can succeed in life.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780593597293
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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